the time of year for letting go
by greer
Summary: um obviously i lied and this is a SENIOR YEAR story.


a/n: OK so I lied. If you got a chance to read my last thing before it was removed from the site, you know that I changed my mind about retiring from this stuff and I am doing a story where it is sort of based on my real life because I am a senior this year. updates will be monthly, probably. also: this has nothing to do with my "fall" series and plotlines from there will not carry over. i don't know what I'm going to do with Mary Anne's Long Summer yet.  
  
CLAUDIA  
  
I glanced at my clock--it was 5:20. I only had ten minutes before our Baby-sitters Club meeted started. I put the finishing touches on the book I was decorating (adding on a few more things with mod podge, writing on my friends' names with a white-out marker) and ran downstairs. I had treats to prepare.  
  
I love food, and I love parties. Naturally I was looking forward to the last BSC meeting before our senior year started, since I'd decided to incoporate both into it. I took the cookies out of the oven, took the drinks out of the refrigerator, and ran into my room.  
  
I had just finished setting everything up when Kristy Thomas came in. "Nice setup, Claud," she said, grinning. Some things never change, and Kristy is one of them. While the rest of baby-sitters (who rarely baby-sit anymore) went through a lot of a changes and struggles with identity, peer pressure, and everything else related to growing up during the past three years of high school, Kristy had somehow managed to bypass all that. By keeping, as it is known, strictly "straight-edge," Kristy had retained her role model-perfect image.   
  
Sad to say most of us haven't, but Kristy doesn't know that. Kristy, I guess, is just glad that we all gather together once a week for Baby-sitters Club meetings, although little baby-sitting goes on anymore. In fact, our focus lately has been mostly on training the next generation of baby-sitters: Karen Brewer (Kristy's sister), Vanessa Pike (Mallory Pike's sister), Suzi Barrett, Charlotte Johanssen, and all the rest of our old clients. Kristy seemed blissfully unaware of our changing role as she slipped on her visor, stuck a Connecticut Bank & Trust pencil over her ear, and waited for the others to arrive.  
  
Mallory and Jessi Ramsey came in together. Mallory had a week of vacation left until she had to leave for her sophomore year of boarding school, and Jessi was home for the weekend from her Dance NY program. Both Mallory and Jessi seem to have really come into their own in their time away from Stoneybrook. Mallory finally got the contacts she had so desired, and she now wears makeup and has finally gotten ahold of her crazy, curly, red mane. Jessi just got more graceful every year, and she had a real presence.  
  
Still, tradition dies hard, especially in the BSC, and Mal and Jessi sat down on the floor in front of my bed.  
  
Someone else walked through my door just as Mal and Jessi got settled. "Stacey!" I cried, and I leapt up to hug my best friend. Stacey had just gotten back from her eight-week program at Columbia University, where she took extensive math and science classes. While New York isn't that far from Stoneybrook, she was really busy with schoolwork and the city. Plus, she had held a job at Canal Jean during her stay in New York. She didn't have much time to come down to Stoneybrook, and I had really missed her.  
  
Stacey is the only best friend I've ever had. We've been best friends since seventh grade, through divorce and death and moves and dumb fights over boys. No matter what happens to us and our friendship, however, we always come back to where we started: sitting in my room, talking about boys and clothes and painting our nails.  
  
While Stacey and I caught up, Dawn, Mary Anne, Abby, Shannon, and Logan came in. I couldn't remember the last time all the members of the BSC, past and present, were together. Dawn lived in California now, and she was going back tomorrow night. Abby, Shannon, and Logan hadn't been members of the BSC for four years, and for the first two years of high school we'd barely seen Logan at all, since he had not taken his breakup with Mary Anne very well. Lately they've become friends, since over the summer they had both worked in the children's room at the Stoneybrook Public Library and they had patched things up. Not to the point of being girlfriend and boyfriend, though; Mary Anne and Logan had become very different people in the three years since they had dated. Now they had come to point where they could be friends--good friends.  
  
The doorbell rang. "Who could that be?" Kristy asked. I shrugged and ran downstairs.  
  
I opened the door and as I expected, it was the delivery boy from Pizza Express. I grabbed some plates from the kitchen and carried the three steaming pies upstairs.  
  
"It's time for a pizza toast!" I announced.  
  
"Here's to the BSC--friends forever!" Kristy cried out. Stacey and I gave each other a look and tried not to laugh. We recovered in time to "clink" our slices together in the old BSC tradition. 


End file.
